The Quickie - James Patterson [26]
Mike was writing Scott’s name on the bullpen Homicide chart when I stepped into the squad room.
I was more or less happily surprised when I realized nobody was looking at me suspiciously. I guess adrenaline-flooded and terror-struck have a passing resemblance to bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Through the smeared glass wall of the rear office, I could see my boss, Lieutenant Keane, talking on his desk phone while dialing his cell.
“What do we got?” I said, handing Mike a bodega coffee from the brown bag I was carrying. Starbucks had yet to make inroads into Soundview.
“Shit,” Mike said, flicking the plastic coffee lid sliver across his desk as he sat. “No sign of either Ordonez. Turns out the pilot’s off work until next Wednesday, and he wasn’t at his apartment. Of the younger and even scummier brother, Victor, we have no sign at all.”
Mike handed me a file folder.
“Check out the family album.”
The Ordonez brothers were the only children of Dominican immigrants. On the slightly older brother, Mark, the Air Force pilot, there was surprisingly little. A single assault bust when he was twenty-one. But the younger one, Victor, had a crime-ography that was a long and interesting read.
From the age of sixteen, Victor had been in and out of jail, putting up MVP crime stats. Burglary, narcotics sales, attempted rape, assaults of prisoners while incarcerated, possession of a deadly weapon.
But for me, one charge stood out as if it had been marked with a neon highlighter.
Attempted murder of a police officer.
The abstract described how at the age of seventeen, Victor, while resisting arrest for yet another possession charge, drew a concealed .380 semiautomatic, pointed it at the officer’s face, and pulled the trigger several times. After he was wrestled to the ground, it was discovered that the gun hadn’t discharged due solely to the fortuitous fact that young Victor, new to the wonderful world of semiautomatics, had forgotten to rack the slide and jack the first round into the chamber. To show you what kind of straits the New York criminal justice system was in during the crack epidemic of the early nineties, Victor did just one year.
I blinked down at the sheet in disbelief.
Victor Ordonez was looking so good for Scott’s murder, I was almost convinced he did it.
I pointed my chin at the file stacks covering both of our adjoining desks and the floor as I sat down.
“Scott’s previous Narcotics cases?” I said.
Mike nodded grimly. He chucked his reading glasses onto his desk and rubbed his eyes.
“I’m not cracking spine one of that saga until we have a talk with our Dominican friends,” he said. “I guess the only good news is I got an ADA to get a subpoena to the telephone company. They’re getting Scott’s phones together right now. They’re going to fax it over within the next ten minutes.”
Chapter 38
I SAT THERE, ROCK STILL, trying to absorb what I had just heard. The fluorescent lights above hummed in my ears like an angry beehive.
How many times had Scott called me in the last month? Twenty? Thirty maybe? How was I going to bluff my way out of this one? I pictured the confusion on my partner’s face as he spotted my number over and over again.
Mike moved his mouse to remove his “Who pissed in your gene pool?” screen saver. It sounded like someone stepping on Bubble Wrap when he rolled his neck.
“Mike, what are you doing?” I finally said.
“Gonna get a jump on those D-D-fives. Keane’s about to have triplets. Look at him in there.”
DD5’s were the incident reports we had to write for Scott’s case file. I raised my eyebrows.
“Um, hello? Earth to Mike,” I said. “People are going to actually read these reports, Shakespeare. You’re the beauty, remember? I’m the brains. In fact, why don’t you go grab a couple in the crash room upstairs. We need your head clear just in case we have to knock down a door with it. I’ll bang out the reports in a way that doesn’t get us reassigned, and when the phone records come in, I